{"id":8246,"date":"2020-05-27T17:22:25","date_gmt":"2020-05-27T11:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/?p=8246"},"modified":"2020-05-27T17:22:25","modified_gmt":"2020-05-27T11:52:25","slug":"steps-towards-national-rural-employment-guarantee-act-reforms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/steps-towards-national-rural-employment-guarantee-act-reforms\/","title":{"rendered":"Steps towards National Rural Employment Guarantee Act reforms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Relevance: Mains: G.S paper II:\u00a0Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Context:<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u2022 The plight of migrant workers in recent weeks has invaded television screens and stirred nation\u2019s conscience. Alas, this is just the tip of the wave of hardships that is sweeping through the country.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The situation looks increasingly alarming in the light of a series of surveys conducted by Azim Premji University (APU) and other institutions.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The APU survey, for instance, found that 74% of the respondents were \u201cconsuming less food\u201d today than before the lockdown.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Another survey was conducted by Farzana Afridi and her colleagues in low-income neighbourhoods of Delhi.<\/p>\n

\u2022 It found that 80% of the respondents had not earned any income during the lockdown, 90% reported \u201cfinancial stress\u201d, and about half were too anxious to sleep at night.<\/p>\n

\"Learner's<\/p>\n

Some support from PDS:<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u2022 The Public Distribution System is preventing the worst. The same surveys show that an overwhelming majority of poor households are currently receiving food rations.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The doubling of food rations for three months was a good move on the part of the central government \u2014 there is every reason to extend it beyond the end of June.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The PDS, however, leaves out 500 million people, including many who live in poverty.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Further, even for those who are covered, the PDS is little more than a protection against hunger. It cannot ensure adequate nutrition, let alone a decent standard of living.<\/p>\n

Cash Transfer:<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u2022 To cope with the crisis, poor households urgently need a chance to earn cash beyond small mercies.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Unconditional cash transfers are not easy to use for this purpose, because there is no simple way of identifying those in need.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Universal basic income is a nice idea, but when you do the maths, anything practical tends to reduce the \u201cbasic income\u201d to a pittance.<\/p>\n

\u2022 India\u2019s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) offers an obvious alternative, at least for rural areas: employment on demand at basic wages.<\/p>\n

Unprecedented Demand:<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u2022 The demand for NREGA work is stronger than ever. This is not surprising: most people would prefer to do some work and earn a little than to sit idle with empty pockets.<\/p>\n

\u2022 This huge demand contrasts with the resilient indifference of rural workers towards NREGA in recent years, due to low wages and erratic payments.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Wages are still low, and payments are still far from timely and reliable; what has changed is that for most workers today, there is nothing better on the cards.<\/p>\n

Jharkhand example:<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u2022 We had a telling experience of this renewed demand for NREGA work in a number of deprived villages of Latehar district in the last few days.<\/p>\n

\u2022 In this area, the idea of work on demand is still alien to most rural workers, so few of them take the initiative of applying for NREGA work.<\/p>\n

\u2022 But whenever we helped people to prepare work applications, men and women from almost every household in the village flocked to the spot with their job cards to fill the forms.<\/p>\n

Filling work applications:<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u2022 Without assistance, however, most workers would find it difficult to submit work applications.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The sad truth is that except in areas where rural workers are relatively empowered, work applications are not generally initiated by the workers themselves.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Instead, they are initiated on their behalf by others, who have a stake in activating NREGA works:<\/p>\n

\u2022 For e.g, landowners who want some work done on their land, middlemen who take cuts at various steps, government officials who are under pressure to meet targets, and village heads who wish to please or serve their constituency.<\/p>\n

\u2022 In other words, NREGA works attract the workers, and not the other way around. That, at any rate, is how it tends to work in the poorer States.<\/p>\n

\u2022 In the old days, workers were allowed to turn up at the worksite and enrol on the spot. That made things easier for them: applying for work was a right, not an obligation.<\/p>\n

\u2022 But now, it has become an obligation: no-one can be employed unless his or her name has been entered in advance in the e-muster rolls. Most workers have no idea how to go about this.<\/p>\n

Large-scale opening of NREGA Works:<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u2022 This is one reason why the scale of NREGA works remains very low in many States in spite of a huge demand for employment.<\/p>\n

\u2022 This situation calls for large-scale opening of NREGA works on a proactive basis.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Every village needs at least one major worksite, where a good number of people can work at short notice.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Ideally, workers should be allowed to enrol at the worksite. Further, large-scale employment generation should continue throughout the monsoon, the hardest period of the year for poor people in large parts of rural India.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Averting a humanitarian disaster in the next few months calls for a veritable explosion of NREGA work.<\/p>\n

Much can be done to facilitate this:<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u2022 To expand the list of permissible works, hiring more gram rozgar sevaks, simplifying the implementation process, mobilising para-teachers for work application drives, and so on.<\/p>\n

\u2022 And of course, top-down orders to expand the scale of works could work wonders. NREGA is not supposed to be top-down, but it does have a long history of top-down orders, and after all, this is an emergency.<\/p>\n

Switch to payment?<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u2022 It is also worth considering a return to a cash payment of NREGA wages, at least as an option for the duration of the crisis.<\/p>\n

\u2022 This would not only help to ensure timely and reliable payment of wages but also spare workers the ordeal of extracting their wages from overcrowded banks or business correspondents.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Further, cash payment of wages would act as a tremendous incentive for rural workers to demand NREGA work, whatever it takes.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The idea of a return to a cash payment of wages is likely to horrify those who trust digital payments to eliminate corruption. But recent experience suggests that this trust is misplaced.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The digital payment system has merely changed the modalities of corruption in NREGA: the crooks used to fudge the paper records, now they fudge the electronic records.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The latter may or may not be harder to fudge than the former depending on the circumstances.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Even if cash payments are a little more vulnerable to leakages, that may be a tolerable price to pay in an emergency, to protect workers from the hazards of NREGA\u2019s byzantine system.<\/p>\n

\u2022 These include a payment rejection rate of 4%, according to official data, and the tyranny of \u201cQwicy\u201d, as the Know Your Customer (KYC) process is known in rural Jharkhand.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Of course, the possible hazards of a hasty switch to cash payments also need to be considered.<\/p>\n

The NREGA budget:<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u2022 Funds are not an immediate concern since the NREGA budget for 2020-21 has been raised to \u20b91-lakh crore or so. But more is likely to be required to meet the tremendous demand for NREGA work.<\/p>\n

\u2022 It is important to ensure that funds never dry up: this happened every year in the last few years, leading to huge wage arrears.<\/p>\n

\u2022 NREGA is supposed to be a demand-driven programme with an open-ended budget; nothing in the Act authorises the government to impose a budget cap.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Conclusion:<\/span><\/h3>\n

\u2022 These are some of the issues that arise in activating NREGA for crisis relief. The main thing is to provide work aplenty and pay wages at speed. This is a matter of life and death.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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